How to Polish Your Trill
The best laid plans. This morning I was looking forward to getting my daughter off to school, having a nice, full practice session, and then sitting down to write.
It didn’t happen that way.
To make a long story short, I just finished a penmanship lesson with Claire, who convinced me that her ‘cold’ was worthy of a day away from school. Needless to say, it doesn’t mean we sit around in front of a tele all day. After I get this little note off to you we’ll turn our attention to reading.
My practice session will have to wait.
So here’s the deal with trills. I believe that the ultimate speed at which one is able to trill, is determined by God.
And yet more importantly, the Clarity, and ultimately the effectiveness of our trill, is up to us.
Now there are folks out there who, when you say ‘trill’, give the impression someone just pressed a doorbell. It’s that fast and effortless.
Yet often the challenge that falls to such people is that of getting control or variability to it; a blazingly fast trill can be out of character some music; a Mozart Andante being one good example.
Most of us are faced with the opposite problem; how to develop the finger reflex we’ve been given to convey an impression of something more.
There are two things that enable this; technique and smart planning.
On the technical side one must resist the urge to press the vibrato into service in an attempt to amplify the finger’s natural reflex. Invariably the result of this will be a muddy, featureless blur; I can guarantee no one is going to be fooled or impressed.
The best approach is always to stay with the finger; keeping it as light and clean as it can possibly be. The more relaxed you are the better will be the result.
What you CAN do, after you’ve isolated the finger motion to a high degree, is experiment with the height you take it above the string. Yet in doing so one must remember to keep the hand relaxed, otherwise it will devolve back into a knot of frustration.
The other side of the trill coin involves planning. If you focus on a given pre-determined of oscillations for the trill – assuming it’s duration is a beat or less, and allow yourself to visualize the entire event each time you arrive to it, you may find yourself ‘tricking’ your finger into doing more than you thought possible.
This requires patience, relaxation and focus, yet I myself am constantly surprised by the results I get from doing just this.
Now, there are countless etudes and studies devoted to trills. Yet there are none more enjoyable and satisfying than those found in Kreutzer. In volume 2 of Kreutzer for Violin Mastery I take you through all manner of possibilities; measured, unmeasured, prepared, with terminations and without terminations.
Though challenging indeed, these etudes can really clean and polish a trill beautifully.
All the best, Clayton Haslop
P.S. There are those that believe in practicing trills using various rhythms. I haven’t mentioned this here because I do not feel they really produce the results I’m after. Kreutzer for Violin Mastery does.
